Coffee, a beverage brewed from ground, roasted beans of the botanical species coffee originated in a part of the world now known as Ethiopia where wild Arabica trees were harvested to obtain the bean concealing cherries. The use of coffee as a beverage gradually spread from Ethiopia to include all of what was considered the civilized world by the early 17th century. Its popularity spread throughout the world in unison with mans advancement in global navigation. By the early 18th century the demand for coffee outstripped the ability of the native Arabica trees and plantations sprung up around the world in every country having a climate hospitable to the Arabica tree. Today, a coffee belt girdling the globe provides a great variety of coffees having regional qualities which attempt to meet the varied taste of the world population.
The characteristic flavor of coffee is affected not only by the point of origin and quality of the bean but also by the processing and roasting of the coffee bean. This provides an infinite variety of flavor characteristics which are further expanded by blending various varietal coffees and by brewing techniques.
The infinite variety afforded by coffee as a beverage is unfortunately a potential which has not been tapped except in a minimal way due to problems in marketing. The flavor of coffee is developed by roasting which causes the chemical reaction of pyrolysis within the beans that develops the coffee oils which create the essence and flavor of coffee. At the present time there is no easy, repeatable way to roast coffee in the home, therefore coffee is purchased preroasted and generally preground. This eliminates the possibility of individuals adjusting the coffee to suit their tastes in that they must be satisfied with products provided by commercial coffee roasters.
The fact that most coffee is sold preground or at least preroasted is an unfortunate circumstance. Coffee begins losing its flavor as soon as it is roasted. Ground coffee loses a significant amount of flavor within hours of being ground while roast coffee stored as whole beans will maintain its flavor reasonably well for approximately one week if sealed in an air tight container to minimize oxidation of the oils. Thus the coffee industry has what appears to be an unlimited variety of flavors that it can offer the public but due to marketing logistics, only a small segment of the potential may be tapped. Conversely, green coffee may be kept for years with little effect on its flavor content other than a mellowing such as is found in the aging of a fine wine.
Ideally then, the coffee industry should market its product as green coffee beans so that the individual consumer may blend and roast beans to meet his desires. Unfortunately, no satisfactory roasting device is available for the individual consumer whereby a small quantity of coffee for a single serving or single pot may be roasted.
A few coffee devotees manage to roast beans in iron skillets but this is a difficult task in that the skillet must be heated to a predetermined temperature and the beans introduced into the heated skillet which must be covered to maintain heat. The beans are agitated to ensure that they do not burn and when they have reached the proper degree of pyrolysis, the roasting must be quenched by dumping the beans onto a cool surface. At best, this method results in a product wherein the individual beans are each roasted to a different degree of roast, ranging anywhere from a light cinnamon roast to a heavy roast in a single batch.
Some improvements have been made to the pan roasting methods wherein a stirring device is fitted in the pan cover so that a person may continually stir the coffee in the pan while the cover is tightly maintained to ensure that the heat remains within the pan. This results in beans of a more uniform roast but the end product is still far from acceptable.
Pan roasting techniques for home use have a further disadvantage. In addition to the inconsistent degree of roasting achieved, the chaff coating of the coffee beans is loosened but not separated from the beans. Therefore, this undesirable part of the coffee bean remains with the beans and can only be separated by a winnowing technique. Furthermore the chaff tends to burn during the pan roasting process and results in a considerable amount of pungent smoke.
One attempt has been made to improve home roasting methods through the use of modern technology. This device is comprised of a hand-held hair dryer like device with a metal funnel over the hot air exhaust. The green beans are placed in the funnel and as the heated air passes through the beans, the operator gently tosses the beans within the funnel by up and down movement of the device. This particular home roaster is impractical for more than an ounce of beans at a time and the operator must continually shake the device which becomes very fatiguing. Also, the chaff associated with the beans is blown around the kitchen or area where the roasting is accomplished.
The early hand-held hair dryer type hot air coffee roasters were improved by devices such as J. Murray's coffee roaster patent, U.S. Pat. No. 4,484,064 and M. Sivetz's coffee roasting system, U.S. Pat. No. 3,964,175. Both of the foregoing devices levitated a charge of green coffee beans in a heated air stream. They relied on an oven chamber which grew progressively larger from the bottom to the top so that the velocity of heated air diminished as the volume increased with the expansion of the dimensions of the oven chamber. This results in a fluidized bed where the beans are levitated by the high velocity air and carried upward but as the velocity to the air stream diminishes, the beans are allowed to fall back. Creating a fluidized bed in this fashion requires high air flow rates and as a result the system is extremely inefficient. In fact, roasters of this type require an excessively long roasting time due to the cooling effect of the upwelling heated air as it expands into the increased diameter upper oven chamber. The end result of this deficiency of the design is that the beans are dried and become stale in the roasting process.
The shortcomings of the prior coffee roasting systems utilizing a fluidized bed created by a flared chamber have been eliminated by the use of a rotating fluidized bed as described in U.S. Pat. 4,494,314 for "Coffee Roaster" issued to Harold Gell on Jan. 22, 1985. With the advent of rotating fluidized bed applications to coffee roaster technology, the problems involving the actual roasting technique have been solved. However, even with the most elaborate of control schemes, coffee roasting is not always accomplished exactly as desired. The roasted bean charge cannot be viewed without interrupting the roasting process and after the quenching cycle, if the beans are too dark there is no remedy. Furthermore, if the beans are too light, there is no remedy because to attempt to roast the beans further will dry the beans excessively and cause them to be less flavorful.